White House Will Appeal Court Ruling

Judges: Whitewater Counsel

Entitled To Notes On First Lady

May 3, 1997|By NEIL A. LEWIS The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The White House said on Friday it would appeal a federal appeals court ruling ordering it to turn over to Whitewater investigators notes taken by government lawyers of conversations they had with first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The 2-to-1 ruling by a three-judge panel in St. Louis was issued in secret last month but was made public on Friday at the request of the White House. White House counsel Charles Ruff said he would ask the Supreme Court to overturn it.

The appeal sets up a legal confrontation between the White House and Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr over the authority of the White House to withhold information from criminal investigators.

A panel of the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, in St. Louis, ruled that Clinton could not invoke the protection of attorney-client privilege. It said White House lawyers worked for the government and could not be used to shield her.

``An official who fears he or she may have violated the criminal law and wishes to speak with an attorney in confidence should speak with a private attorney, not a government attorney,'' the court said.

The White House does not have to turn over the notes until the Supreme Court makes a decision.

Ruff, the White House counsel, said he hoped the Supreme Court would decide by June whether to hear the case.

The notes being sought by Starr cover two meetings between Clinton and White House lawyers.

The first set was taken by Miriam Nemetz, a former associate White House counsel, at a July 11, 1995, White House meeting attended by Clinton, Jane Sherburne, another White House lawyer, and David Kendall, Clinton's private lawyer.

They discussed Clinton's activities after the apparent suicide two years earlier of Vincent Foster, an associate White House counsel and a friend of Clinton. Starr is investigating whether anyone at the White House removed Whitewater records from Foster's White House office.

The second set of notes was taken by Sherburne on Jan. 26, 1996, when she was a White House special counsel who worked on Whitewater and related matters.

Those conversations took place the day Clinton testified before a grand jury in Washington. The majority opinion, written by Judge Pasco M. Bowman II, said: ``We believe the strong public interest in honest government and in exposing wrongdoing by public officials would be ill-served by recognition of a governmental attorney-client privilege applicable in criminal proceedings inquiring into actions of public officials.

``We also believe that to allow any part of the federal government to use its in-house attorneys as a shield against the production of information relevant to a federal criminal investigation would represent a gross misuse of public assets.''